


Picked Apart

by joufancyhuh



Series: Battle Cry [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Self Harm, Trich, Trichotillomania, aka graphic hair pulling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-29 11:44:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19019242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joufancyhuh/pseuds/joufancyhuh
Summary: Tabris' stress relief comes in a destructive form.





	Picked Apart

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I just really wanted to write about trich, ok. I don't see a lot of characters in general with it and poor Erenya got my bad habit because one of the OCs were going to get it.

Erenya’s fingers slick with the grease from her pomade as she pinches the roots of her russet-colored hair. She pulls. Plucks. Rips and tears through her scalp like a battlefield, chips off her confidence left in clumps around her bedroll. Her own private meditation, her fingers walking the line of small bald spots and spreading them, growing them out with each extract. 

Her hair is God and she prays through self destruction; it’s the only way she knows. Nails biting into her scalp, yanking out another piece, another strand of kinky hair. Repeat. The guilt lingers long after she stops, her fingers numb and red, head tender from her repetitive abuse. 

Sometimes it's her eyelashes, so small and delicate, or her eyebrows, once strong and defined, now spotted. Holes, peeks into her raveling sanity, her building stress. No one speaks on it if they notice. 

But when she has to stop what she's doing because her hand refuses to leave her hair, Zevran stops too. He touches her elbow and shame darkens her cheeks at this unintentional witness. But with his voice soft, tender, he asks for help with sharpening the blades, and she agrees, eager to change tasks, to keep her hands busy and away from her face. 

When he spots her at it again, he stoops down to where she curls into herself by the fireside, everyone else off to bed or on guard. And again that same voice, free of judgement, calloused hands sliding hers away from their prison, fingers interlocking as he smiles and sits with her until the fire dies down. 

Holding his hand keeps her hair in tact, so she finds reasons, makes up excuses. “People will talk, Pepe,” he chides with a squeeze of her hand, a knowing glint in his sunrise eyes. But it works well enough for small regrowth, and he keeps her busy with cooking or practice with the blades. He never asks about it, why she tears into herself like this. 

Inside the tent, he disappears, and she picks at her scalp like a lullaby, wrapped in her bedroll and tired but not enough to stop. She spends nights by the fire until her limbs drag with weariness, and even then her fingers seek solace. 

But in the Deep Roads, no tents separate the team and she can’t stop, even in full view of everyone. Disgust bubbles in her throat like bile as clumps form in their usual places around her; she shuts her eyes to block out the audience because she can’t stop, she can’t --

A hand finds her, familiar scars and calluses across the fingers that weave between her own. She almost lets out a squeak when he makes contact, surprised to feel him so close. “It is  _ molto freddo _ down here,” Zevran says, loud enough for anyone listening to overhear. “Mind if I cuddle you?” 

Tears well in the corners of her eyes as she reopens them to find his sunrise eyes staring at her, firelight dancing behind him. When her lower lip begins to tremble --who gave him the right to show such kindness toward her -- he offers her a smile and shifts closer to her, an arm reaching out to pull her in. 

“Thank you,” she whispers, low enough for only him to hear, then stretches herself up enough to brush her lips against the corner of his mouth. 

“ _ Che roba _ , Pepe!” he replies, voice lit with pleasure and surprise at the kiss. “I merely offered my body heat, and you are trying to take advantage of this Zevran’s good nature.”

Not wanting to let go of him, she brings up her other hand to clamp over his mouth. The corners of his lips draw back into a grin beneath her palm as he continues to stare at her. But she stifles her giggles into her shoulder and his echo muffled from under her hand. When she removes it, he leans forward and kisses the tip of her nose. “Now we are even,” he mutters. She squeezes his hand as her eyes close for sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> *molto freddo=very cold  
> *che roba=unbelievable


End file.
